With skill and resources, they persuade power to benefit their clients. SHANTANU GUHA RAY trawls the world of Delhi's adept influencers ON A QUIET Tuesday last month, the rooftop res - taurant of a leading central Delhi hotel had four of its dozen tables occupied. One had a senior former editor lunching with a high flying cabinet minister; another a troubleshooter for the Delhi state government with fundraising businessmen; the third had a hushed negotiation between an A-list persuader and a senior bureaucrat; only the fourth table was made up of a clutch of lunching ladies. In a city of intrigue and counter intrigue, where a small noting on a file can swing millions, and levers of power can be bent in many ways, this is a scene that routinely plays itself out in a dozen other places: the shadowed confines of the Delhi Gymkhana Club, private clubs at Oberoi and Taj Hotel, the exclusive greens of Delhi Golf Club or, in winter months, the verandah tables of the Imperial Hotel's coffee shop. Welcome to the world of the influencers. A small tribe of men and women who understand that money cannot make money without managing power. And power is managed in many ways. Careful cartography. Glib conversation. Subtle pressure, media plants, an orchestrated idea of public good and always the final resort: private benefit. In the US and elsewhere in the world, such management of power is recognised as legitimate activity: lobbying. Instead of intrigue and counter intrigue, there is visible pressure and counter pressure on government decision-making. In India, it is something far more ambiguous. The lunch-mates on the rooftop and elsewhere in the city would prefer to be heard